Category:Bestiary

Even during an age of strife, adventurers will frequently find time to step away from the battles at hand, if not out of necessity, then simply for a change of pace. Whether procuring pelts for sale at the market, gathering ingredients for alchemic endeavors, or finding a tasty morsel to quell the incessant grumblings of one's belly, hunting is an indispensable part of an adventurer's daily routine.

However, taking up a blade against the realm's wildlife can be no less dangerous than standing in a shield wall on the front lines of battle, or defending a fortress against a bloody siege. The harsh environs of Eorzea have left their mark on the land's fauna, culling the weak and sharpening the senses of those that survived; and while they may not be tainted with the same dark ambitions that poison the hearts of men, the beasts are equally ruthless when threatened. Thus, a truly skilled hunter will never step into the wild without first fully understanding the beast they pursue.

The fauna and flora of Eorzea were long-ago collected into a seminal bestiary called the Raimdelle Codex. In the modern age, it is still the go-to resource for for identification and classification of the region's lifeforms. When limited to the range of monsters you will face in Eorzea, the biological classification system is as follows.

Kingdom

Also known as Regnum, contains three categories, Bloodborn, Bloodless, and Transcendents

↳ Class

Also known as Kindred, contains twelve major groupings—anomalies are placed in Undocumented

It is important to remember that the Raimdelle classification system is artificially organic in its construction—it is meant to resemble a "top-down" naturalist viewpoint reflecting Eorzean's limited knowledge and imperfect record-keeping. For instance, many levels of taxonomy will often share a single name—at one time, "coblyn" can refer to a Genus of the Soulkin class, the blue-hued Species within said Genus, and a specific monster of that species. Similarly, some enemies may have names given to them by Eorzeans that are not accurate at all. For example, it is highly unlikely that the Deepvoid Deathmouse is any more than an extraordinarily large specimen of the very ordinary Dormouse, despite the locals' name for it. Taxonomy may at times be difficult to discern; indeed, it's conceivable that some enemies cannot be reconciled with Raimdelle's imperfect system at all. Perhaps, over time, our own naturalists will give rise to a reformed version of the Codex.